Syria's first astronaut defects

Syria's first astronaut, General Mohammad Fares, is the latest senior officer to defect
from the army. The Syrian opposition
has posted a video in which Fares confirms he has joined the rebels and is fighting Bashar Assad's
forces in northern Syria.

Recorded in Aleppo,
the video shows Fares expressing his solidarity with the Free Syrian Army. Most Syrians remember Fares from a famous video conversation he held with former Syrian President Hafez Assad while he was in space in 1987.

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Also Sunday, a pan-Arab television station aired a video purportedly showing Syrian rebels with a group of Iranians abducted a day earlier just outside Damascus.

The footage shown on the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya shows men identified as the Iranians sitting on the ground surrounded by fighters who said they were from the "Baraa Brigades."

Video allegedly showing Iranian hostages

A rebel claims in the video that the captives include an officer of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and that the group was on a "reconnaissance mission."

Iran's state-run news agency SANA said the 48 abducted Saturday were pilgrims. It said Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi spoke on the phone with Turkish and Qatari foreign ministers and demanded their intervention to help release them.